


Broken

by maeone



Category: The Lord of the Rings (Movies), The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Dark, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-24
Updated: 2014-02-25
Packaged: 2018-01-13 14:20:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1229656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maeone/pseuds/maeone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ever since Faramir had taken the Ring from Frodo that day in Ithilien, he had become exceptionally good at breaking people.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first attempt at fanfiction, so please be kind in your criticism!

Pain and more pain are all she knows. She knows it wasn’t always this way. A corner of her mind is still free of the torture and remembers that she used to be happy. She doesn’t remember what it feels like to be happy, though. She hasn’t for a very long time.

Sometimes, snatches of memory will break through. Sometimes sounds, sometimes images or scents. The most common of these is someone yelling “Eowyn!” She thinks that’s her name. Sometimes a glimpse of golden fields, with a group of riders riding away fast, so fast, will come to the front of her mind. Sometimes there is blond hair blowing in the wind.

But these memories are few and far between, and are steadily getting less frequent. Soon, she knows, they will fade altogether, and even the memory of happiness will pass away.

Occasionally, there are respites from the pain. But these are, if anything worse. In these respites, she is on the verge of remembering, but she just can’t. In these respites, she feels fear and sadness, an overwhelming sense of failure and loss, and it hurts, it hurts so bad, that she cries out, and she starts crying, sobbing, and then the physical pain starts again. She can’t figure out which is supposed to be the respite and which is supposed to be the torture.

Once in a while, a voice will penetrate her consciousness. It’s a handsome voice, one she feels inclined to trust, and it whispers promises to her. “I can make all of this stop if you just ask.” “Help me, and you will live like a queen.” But something in her, some instinct from before the pain, warns her against it, and she shakes her head, she screams, “No! Get away!” and the voice recedes, fades away, and the pain starts again.

But every time she hears it, she is more and more tempted to say yes. Maybe if she says yes, the few memories she has left will stay with her. Maybe if she says yes, she can be happy again. She knows, deep down, that she will say yes one day. She will embrace the voice and its promises. The pain is just too much to bear. Whenever she is about to say yes, though, some iron part of her will, however small, stops her. And she doesn’t want to say yes, she doesn’t want to give in to this mysterious voice. Some part of her knows, deep down, that she and the voice are enemies. But the iron part of her will that forces her to always say no gets smaller each time she hears the voice. It’s inevitable that she will say yes one day.

 

The voice knows this, too. It knows that it is wearing her down. And it is glad. The owner of the voice wants her as his queen. Ever since he had first laid eyes on her, fierce and proud, even in chains, he wanted her. But he couldn’t just take her—she would never be accepting of who he is and what he’d done. He knew that he’d have to break her. Like he broke the halflings who had refused to give him the Ring. Like he broke the supposed heir of Isildur, who would have taken his kingdom.

Ever since Faramir had taken the Ring from Frodo that day in Ithilien, he had become exceptionally good at breaking people.


	2. Chapter 2

Frodo had begged Faramir to let him and Sam go, to not take the Ring. But Faramir hadn’t. He had taken the ring, for Gondor. If the words of Frodo were to be believed, he had done what Boromir hadn’t been able to. And it had felt good, to outshine his brother. It wasn’t like he had ever wanted to, really, but there had always been a corner of his mind that longed for the praise Boromir got from Denethor that he didn’t.

And when he had taken the ring from Frodo’s neck, as he had watched the hope go out of the halfling’s eyes, that part had risen to the front and overtaken him. He had suddenly needed to do more, to be better than he had ever been before. 

But Frodo wouldn’t let the Ring go that easily. He had attacked Faramir, pulling him to the ground and clawing his face, pulling the Ring out of his grasp. Before Frodo could slip it on, Faramir’s men had jumped on him and ripped it out of his hands.

“Tie their hands,” Faramir had said coldly to his men, who had quickly obeyed and bound Frodo and Sam. When Faramir had first taken the Ring from Frodo, Sam had leapt up, but Frodo had attacked before he could. He had glared at Faramir, and struggled against being bound, while Frodo had accepted it sullenly and just stood there, looking defeated. 

It had felt good, wearing the Ring on a chain around his neck, to walk into Minas Tirith. He was powerful. And the look on Denethor’s face…it was amazing. The best feeling in the world. 

Mithrandir had been there. When he had seen Faramir marching into the city, the two halflings bound and trailing behind him, he had just deflated. All the hope had left him. And there had been another halfling with Mithrandir. When he saw Frodo and Sam, he jumped up and ran to them, yelling their names. They had looked up at that, and yelled his name back. “Pippin!” they had said. “Where’s Merry? Is he alright?” Before Pippin had had a chance to answer, Faramir’s men had grabbed him and carried him back to Mithrandir. 

Faramir had spoken to the halfling called Pippin. “You would do well not to associate with these two. They are enemies of Gondor.”

Pippin hadn’t been able to understand that. “Frodo and Sam? They aren’t enemies of Gondor; they were working against Mordor.”

Faramir had simply walked on. 

When Denethor had seen him, the two halflings in tow, he could see that something important had happened. Before he’d had the chance to ask what, Faramir had walked up to his throne and thrown him from it. “You do not deserve this seat, old man,” he had said. “I am the Steward of Gondor. Leave, now.” Faramir’s words, enforced by his armed retinue and two halfling prisoners, had cowed Denethor into leaving.

After that, it was just too easy. Faramair had claimed the Ring as his own. He had pretended he wanted only to defeat Mordor to win the support of Aragorn and the Dunedain, and the Rohirrim. The two halflings, Frodo and Sam, he had kept imprisoned, and not even Mithrandir had dared to defy him openly, but Faramir could see that he was plotting to free them. So he had slowly pushed Mithrandir away and turned the people against him. 

The other two halflings, Pippin and his friend Merry, Faramir didn’t imprison. They hadn’t tried to keep the Ring from him. He had no reason to imprison them. They had stayed close to Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas at first, watching Faramir with distrustful eyes. As soon as the war was won, they had fled back home to their precious Shire.

Faramir had won the war with ease. With the power of the Ring at his command, and the armies of Gondor and Rohan, with the support of Aragorn, it had been almost too easy. He had plowed through Sauron’s armies of orcs and men, then marched into Mordor and overthrown Sauron. With their old master dead, and him with the Ring, the Nazgul had become Faramir’s servants. 

And then Faramir had turned Gondor on the armies of the West. The added power of the Nazgul allowed him to subdue the Dunedain and the Rohirrim quickly and efficiently. The elves he had let flee west to Valinor, and he had left the dwarves alone. His interest lay in men.

A few escaped, of course. That was inevitable. Some had fled when he had first taken the Ring, others when Mordor had fallen, a few when he had attacked. He had let them go. Why not? It would be a waste of resources to send out troops after them, when he still had to subdue Rohan and set his realm in order. There were still some orcs, roaming in packs through the wilderness, that Faramir had known would find some of the refugees. And of those that had escaped the orcs, where could they go? They would find no refuge from the elves, who had fled, or the dwarves, who would not dare go against Faramir. They could try and flee south of Gondor, to the realms of the corsairs, or west, to the shores of the sea, where some men dwelled. And many of them had made it. But they could do no harm to Faramir from there.

Once he had subdued Rohan, he had carted off droves of prisoners in chains, to work on rebuilding Gondor, making Mordor inhabitable, or as simple household servants. Among these had been Aragorn, son of Arathorn, and Eowyn, his lovely soon-to-be queen. She hadn’t fought when his men had come for her, to put her in chains, or when her brother Eomer had been killed. Faramir hadn’t meant to kill him, but he had struggled against the chains and left Faramir no choice. And he wished now that he hadn’t. He could have been very useful, especially with Eowyn as Faramir’s queen. 

And she hadn’t cried when Edoras had been plundered and burned, or as she, with the other prisoners, had been marched to Minas Tirith. She had stood there, proud and fair, fighting back tears but not letting them fall. Faramir had noticed this. Among his many prisoners, the only ones who wouldn’t cry out had been Aragorn and Eowyn. He had expected it from Aragorn, of course. He would have been surprised at anything less. Eowyn, however…he had been expecting her to scream and rage, to cry like the others.

He had thought she would make a fine queen for him. When he had approached her, one night, on the road to Minas Tirith, and taken her face in his hands, inspecting her, she had torn away from his grasp and spit in his face. “Do not touch me,” he remembered her saying fiercely, much fiercer than she had any right to, given her situation. His men had rushed forward at that, ready to punish her, but he had stopped them. He would have her, he knew then. And she would not be punished for what she had done. He would have done the same in her place.

It had been immediately clear to Faramir that she would never willingly be his queen. He would have to break her first.

So when they had arrived at Minas Tirith, he had taken her and Aragorn aside. He had brought them to a small room, and he had locked them in there. He would break Aragorn because he couldn’t let the rightful King of Gondor live unbroken. He would break Eowyn so she would be his wife. And he would break the halflings he had found in Ithilien, who had refused to give him the Ring.

He had broken the halflings first. Frodo he had tortured for days, weeks, on end, and he had broken Sam just by forcing him to watch. Faramir had known that the screams of the two halflings would begin his work on Aragorn for him.

When he had finished with them, the halflings had been shells of their former selves, especially Frodo. Sam still had some life in him, but watching his master be tortured for weeks straight had taken their toll. And Faramir had told Sam that if he caused any trouble, it would be taken out on Frodo.

Then came Aragorn. When Faramir had come for him, he had looked on him with loathing, but Faramir could see some fragileness in his eyes that hadn’t been there. Listening to your friends screams for so long will do that to a person. Eowyn had given him the same look, but she hadn’t been friends with these halflings. It hadn't had the same effect.

Aragorn had taken months to break. He had been a strong, proud man, with an even stronger, prouder will. Now, he was a meek servant of Faramir’s who was scared of the dark.

Faramir had come for Eowyn weeks after he had finished with Aragorn. He had known that the silence, especially harsh after so many screams, would unsettle her.

And every night, when she had finally succumbed to a fitful sleep, he would come into her room and whisper softly into her ear that it was all her fault, her brother was dead because of her, she had lost the war against Rohan, it was her fault that Edoras had burned, she should have done more to stop it, she should have kicked and screamed and cried and raged to save her people, instead of just standing there, looking on as her home burned like the useless fool she was. He had told her that there was no hope, she would die in this room, she would starve to death, and he had told her that everyone she had ever known was dead, and if she didn’t die in this room, if she somehow escaped, the remnants of her people would hate her and shun her, but that if she didn’t, a worse fate than Aragorn’s was awaiting her. He had planted these ideas in her head, in her sleeping, half-starved state, and she had started to believe them. When he had finally come for her, she’d had a haunted look in her eyes, and she had begged him to just kill her already. Faramir had just smiled and led her away to be broken. 

Then the real fun had begun. She was easier to break than Aragorn, of course—she might have an iron will, but it was no match for the heir of Isildur’s. She was still harder than he was expecting, though. Faramir had underestimated her. And that made it all the more fun.

He could have stopped long ago. She wouldn’t have fought, she would have meekly followed him and become his queen. But he didn’t want that. Faramir wanted for her to accept him, not just follow him. So he had continued, asking every so often if she wanted it stop. She hadn’t said yes yet, but Faramir could tell he was wearing her down. Soon, he would have a queen.


End file.
